Kurt Dussander
Kurt Dussander was a former Sturmbannführer in the SS. In the 1980s in southern California, high school student Todd Bowden discovers fugitive Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander living in his neighborhood under the pseudonym Arthur Denker. Bowden, obsessed with Nazism and acts of the Holocaust, persuades Dussander to share his stories, and their relationship stirs malice in each of them. During the war, Dussander was stationed in several concentration camps. From January 1943 to June 1943, he was at Bergen-Belsen camp and June 1943 to June 1944 at Auschwitz. Lastly, he went to Patin, (There was no concentration camp there in real life) and disappeared afterwards. Dussander stated that he had been a US citizen since 1955. Todd also found out that Dussander had been spotted in West Berlin in 1965, on which occasion he came close to being caught. In 1984, Todd Bowden discovered that a Nazi SS officer called Kurt Dussander he'd seen on war time photographs was living in his home city under the name Arthur Denker. Todd went to his door and demanded an audience. Dussander declined, but Todd revealed that he had been spying on him, taking photographs and dusting fingerprints from his mailbox and comparing them to archived records, and was therefore sure that Denker was actually the notorious Nazi officer. Todd promised not to reveal him to the authorities, but only if Dussander agreed to tell him stories about the holocaust and his involvement in it. Todd spent many weeks visiting Dussander after school, listening his stories about the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. While this greatly interested Todd, it also gave him nightmares, and warped his personality to a degree. Todd later bought Dussander a copy of an SS officer's uniform, because he wanted to see him wearing it. Dussander wasn't happy about this, but wore it anyway by Todd's orders. Wearing the uniform seemed to bring Dussander's old memories to surface, and soon afterwards got a sadistic hunger for killing. He grabbed a nearby stray cat from his backyard, and tried to kill it by stuffing it in his oven. The cat ended up scarring Dussander in the arm, and escaped through the open window. Later, a homeless man followed Dussander into his home, and demanded that Dussander invited him over for a drink. Dussander agreed, but only so that he could later try and kill the man with a knife. Dussander stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife, but the deed turned out to be a bigger struggle than he thought, and wounded himself in the process, while the homeless man dropped dead on his basement floor. Dussander called Todd and begged for help, as calling the ambulance would have risked revealing his true identity. Todd arrived, but realized that an ambulance was necessary to save Dussander's life. As Dussander was unconscious at the hospital, an old man next to him recognized him, as he was an inmate at a German concentration camp during the war. The old man escaped the room in utter shock and panic, and started crying when he found a nurse. Dussander's fears came true, as when he woke up in the hospital the next day, three law enforcers were standing around his bed, and arrested him, telling Dussander that he would be at Jesuralem by the end of the summer. Dussander was allowed to stay at the hospital until he recovered from his wounds. When the word spread about him, a large group of protestors and Neo-Nazis surrounded the hospital, trying to get their view of justice done. Dussander realized that the only way out was suicide, and detached the peripheral tube in his arm and put it in his mouth, which slowly killed him. Notes *He is played by Sir Ian McKellen. *The reproduction uniform Todd bought Dussander had the collar tabs of an Obersturmbannführer, on which Dussander commented 'I see I have been promoted'. It also had the old style shoulder boards that normally went with the black SS uniform, and a sleeve diamond for the SS Race and Settlement Department. Both details are historically incorrect for a war-time camp commandant's uniform. Gallery dussander1.png|Dussander wears the reproduction uniform Todd bought him, and marches by his orders. dussander2.jpg|Dussander is recognized by a former concentration camp inmate. Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt Dussander, Kurt